Super Star Wars Review

An alternate reality version of the tale, where Luke turns to the Dark Side and kills everyone in sight.

The story of Star Wars is timeless. A young man, raised in the desert, learns the galaxy is a much bigger place than he thought after he goes on a blind rampage through a Sandcrawler, murdering countless Jawas with heat-seeking missiles. A brash smuggler mounts a daring rescue of the princess he'll one day fall in love with, by blasting apart an enormous Stormtrooper hovercraft and the ED-209 enforcement droid, on loan from RoboCop. And their lovable alien companion, the walking carpet, keeps the group in high spirits and offers comic relief even while firing burning plasma bolts into the dangerously deadly hallucinations that plague his mind after too many years of playing Dejarik.

... Wait, that doesn't sound quite right.

Super Star Wars takes a lot of creative license with the storyline of its source material -- so much so that it's not so much a video game adaptation of the film as some kind of alternative reality telling of the tale, where Luke, Han and Chewie are all ruthless killers, their aim is not to save the galaxy but to destroy it before the Empire has the chance, and their individual blaster guns pack more firepower than the Death Star itself.

So if you're looking for a faithful retelling of one of your favorite films, you won't find it here. But you will find lots and lots of explosions.

Deep inside the interior of his victims' home,Darth Farmboy takes aim at his next target.

Super Star Wars is a side-scrolling action/platformer that goes completely over-the-top at every possible opportunity with the ludicrous amount of action that's been crammed into the narrative of what was, already, a fairly action-packed story. It was released on the SNES in 1992, and, at that time, it offered the most complete video game adaptation of the classic movie's plot. You start off as young Luke Skywalker in the desert of Tatooine, you rescue the droids C-3P0 and R2-D2, you travel to Mos Eisley to meet up with Chewbacca and Han Solo and then the whole gang ultimately ends up on the Death Star, saving the princess before blowing the space station out of the sky.

The general structure is the same, it's just the details that are very, very different. You might be taken a bit aback by the fact that Luke fights and kills the Sarlacc Monster (from Return of the Jedi) in the very first stage of this adventure. Or that the Jawas holding Artoo captive have decided to keep a Lava Beast in their basement. Or that Luke's landspeeder is outfitted with turbo boosters, flight capability and a double-barreled laser cannon. But all the alterations are made in the name of making Star Wars a better, more high-energy action experience -- it's like somebody mashed up the galaxy far, far away with Contra III, or Gunstar Heroes.

And, like those games, it can also be brutally, hair-pullingly hard to beat. Super Star Wars offers three difficulty settings, "Easy," "Brave" and "Jedi." Easy works about like advertised, and will probably be the only way that many players have a chance to see the entire game start-to-finish. Brave is the default, and is already so tough that you'd have to be a professional gamer to hope to get through it unscathed. And Jedi? Well, you really would need to have access to the Force to complete that quest.

The challenge factor comes from a variety of sources -- some of them welcome, like the huge swarms of enemies that assault you and keep you on your toes. Other elements just feel cheap and annoying, though, like the stiff jumping control that will cause you to miss critical jumps and them plummet back down to the bottom of a huge stage, erasing ten minutes' worth of careful progress. Or the instant-death sand traps that will claim your heroes' lives with just the slightest touch, even though every previous level has had you running across countless other, totally harmless dunes.

The Verdict

It's actually a bit surprising to me that Super Star Wars has retained the popularity it has over the years, because I'd think most gamers who got their hands on the original SNES cartridge in the '90s would have been frustrated to the point of not wanting to return to it -- but there must be a strong following of hardcore players who mastered the challenge nonetheless, or else nostalgia's pulling a Jedi mind trick, because the reaction to LucasArts' announcement that this game and its two sequels were headed to the Virtual Console seems to have been met with nothing but universal praise and acceptance. Maybe the Star Wars fanbase really is just that strong.

But use caution in your decision-making before you take the plunge -- an investment of 800 Wii Points is perfectly valid for this design, which still offers intense and explosive action in the galaxy far, far away even 17 years after its original release. But it really is incredibly, frustratingly challenging on any difficult setting other than Easy, and its version of the Star Wars story is only loosely in line with what you've seen through your Special Edition DVD. (Unless you somehow scored the incredibly rare Luke-slaughters-the-Jawas extra extended version.)